


The World Through His Eyes

by ViridianPanther



Series: Love Goes Out The Window [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, Angst, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Defenestration, Enemies to Allies, First Meetings, Hopeful Ending, Language Barrier, M/M, Men Crying, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Pre-Canon, Religious Fanaticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26685715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViridianPanther/pseuds/ViridianPanther
Summary: defenestrateverb(rare)throw (someone) out of a window.One night in Ascalon, Nicolò of Genoa is awoken by the infidel he cannot kill, holding a white flag and pleading for peace in a broken lingua franca.Unsurprisingly, someone ends up going out the window.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Love Goes Out The Window [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941874
Comments: 15
Kudos: 174





	The World Through His Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warning:** This young version of Nicolò is an arsehole. He is extremely ignorant and uses Islamophobic terms such as 'saracen.' He briefly (and unsuccessfully) toys with trying to convert Yusuf to Christianity. There's also a passing mention of cannibalism (there is evidence the Crusaders did actually partake in this at the siege of Ma'aara), although Nicolò did not take part in it and is almost starved as a result. While he's ultimately a sympathetic character, I am _not_ nice to Nicolò in this.
> 
> I've made every effort with historical accuracy and have tried to treat the subject matter with sensitivity. But, as usual, if I've got anything offensively wrong, or have allowed harmful tropes to seep in, please message me (@viridianpanther on Tumblr) and I will fix it right away.

**Nico: Ascalon, MXCIX A.D.**

Sleep has not come easily to Nicolò of Genoa since his death, so it is hardly a surprise when he jolts awake.

The light of the candle is like a pin driving itself between Nico’s eyes. It burns. It dances around and flickers such that he cannot focus on anything, but he—

“Nico?”

He sees the moving of a jaw. A black beard, and two brown eyes, and—

 _No_ , it cannot be, but Nico reaches for the knife under the bed, and scrabbles for the hilt, and springs to his feet, because yes, _he_ is here, and he is ready to plunge the knife into the Saracen’s throat—

“Spettar!”

The voice surprises him, enough for him to obey, and stop pushing at the knife. The Saracen, the demon, the one who cursed him, is struggling, and just said—

“Pace,” he now whispers. His eyes are closed, and this is— well, this is the first time Nico has heard the Saracen’s voice beyond guttural screams, and now he is clutching a length of white fabric and repeating, again and again, “pace. Pace. Isto pace, si?”

A trickle of blood escapes from the wound, and lands on the Saracen’s tunic (positively filthy, riddled with holes and rips and splits). The white banner he holds in his hands, however, is as pristine as the site on his neck where the wound has now closed and smoothed itself over.

“Ti sabir?” he now asks, and Nico recognises how he understood the words he had said before, the fact that he recognised the sounds coming out of this bastard’s mouth— he is murmuring in something close to Nicolò’s own Genoese tongue, asking if he can understand, and holding a white flag and asking for peace. “No combatir. Pace. Ti sabir? Ti intendir? Pace.”

(His voice is not the deep snarl Nicolò expects. The syllables, while delivered lumpily, are soft and mellifluous.)

Nico spits in the Saracen’s face, and whispers, hoarsely, “fuck you.” He wants to pick the knife up again and drive it through this man’s throat (maybe that will shut him up for a few minutes) but he does not know what good it will do—

“You are called Nico, yes?” the Saracen asks, after wiping the spit away from his face with the white flag. Everything he says is halting, uncertain, not quite sure if Nicolò has understood him (as if the ‘fuck you’ was not quite evidence enough.)

Nicolò is well aware his eyes are widening in shock. He could spit again at this infidel, demand that he keeps Nico’s name off his filthy tongue. He could stamp on his feet and ask: “how do you know?”

(But he knows. Really. Underneath.)

“Leave me alone, Satan,” he says, weary, fighting back a yawn, because he is exhausted to his bones of this. “You cannot even leave me to sleep in peace.”

The Saracen’s mouth drops open a little, his eyebrows rising, his eyes themselves glassy. He looks as nervous as Nicolò feels.

“I am not Satan,” he replies.

And although Nicolò knows that this is what the Devil does, takes a human-like form, fair, desperate, and irresistible, and use it to lead the pious away from God’s path—

“What did you do to me?” Nico demands. “What the _fuck_ did you do, devil?”

“I did nothing,” the Saracen pleads, and his voice is soft, and Nico feels guilty although he knows he _cannot_ , and this filthy Devil-worshipper is playing mind games with him, and yet—

And yet.

“I have seen you,” he continues. “When I sleep. I saw you. I saw us fight. I saw you. I heard your name.”

This is not a mind game, Nico thinks, because this is what happened to him too.

Indeed, this is how Nicolò got his first proper look at the Saracen ( _the_ Saracen, his Saracen, the only one he’s killed.) At night, he’s seen the face of the man he had killed, twisted in pain, a wretched cry escaping on his last breaths—and, to his shame, Nicolò now knows what _umm_ means, and knows that the first time he drove his blade through this man, he cried for his mother.

Sometimes, Nico sees his own face, eyes lit with a fury that terrifies him. Sometimes, he sees the Saracen, covering himself in water, scrubbing at his face, his hands, his feet. Sometimes, he sees him kneeling on a strip of fabric, praying to whatever pagan god he and his infidel comrades worship, maybe performing some black magic or incantation.

(Sometimes, he sees two foreign women, speaking tongues he does not understand, lighting fires and riding horses and cutting through armies like knives through cheese.)

Sometimes, Nico sees the Saracen on the streets of Jerusalem, screaming, sobbing, retching, sitting down in pools of blood surrounded by corpses and then crying again, his blood-stained fingers leaving a revolting sanguineous pattern on his forehead. (This is usually on the nights when Nico awakens in tears.)

And sometimes— _sometimes_ —he sees him sleeping, and feels envious of how peaceful and warm he looks.

(Something buried deep within Nicolò wants this for himself.)

“You saw me, when you slept, yes?” asks the Saracen. “I saw you.”

“ _What_ did you see?”

“I saw you,” he replies. “I saw that you—”

The Saracen pauses, and Nico knows he has reached the limit of what sabir will permit. He watches the man’s eyebrows furrow again, as he determines how he will cram what he has seen into a limited vocabulary.

“I saw two women, and you, and you were—” the Saracen finally says, halting again: “in your house of god, you piangée.”

Nicolò stares, blankly, and the Saracen rolls his eyes.

He repeats: “piangée? You did piangir?”

The word still makes no sense to Nicolò, one that is not shared with his Genoese tongue.

“Bakayta,” the Saracen says, “piangée…” and then he spends a few seconds thinking, and suggests: “your eyes rained.”

“What _sorcery_ are you trying to invoke, Demon?” Nico growls. “Are you going to curse me again—”

“No!” the Saracen insists. “Rain. Your eyes. Water. In your prayer house. Your eyes had sad water. I saw that.”

 _Sad water?_ Does the man hope to imbue liquid with a soul, now, and use it to take over Nicolò’s corpus for nefarious purposes—

“I saw that you were sleeping and praying,” the Saracen continues, rudely interrupting Nico’s train of thought.

And this is true.

Yes, he has beseeched God, on this long, accursed march, for a way to feed himself and vanquish the tortuous hunger pains without doing as many of his comrades had done at Ma’ara and literally eating butchered Saracens. For a way to serve the glory of God that does not involve slaying innocents. He has cried himself to sleep more than once with prayers.

(There were also the times he has fallen asleep whilst pleasuring himself, and he certainly hopes this Saracen did not see _that_ —)

“Silence,” Nico snaps, because what the Saracen is saying is too close to the bone, and he is— “Leave me in peace, Satan.”

The man sighs again. “I told you before. I said. Not Satan. Not Iblīs.”

“What are you, then, Saracen?”

Nicolò almost feels bad when the man winces, his eyebrows furling together in disgust, at the word ‘Saracen.’ Depending on who you ask, it means _plunderer_ , _barbarian_ , _person cast out by Sarah_.

(Nico _almost_ feels bad.)

“I sell carpets,” he says. “I export fabrics from Tunis.”

He clutches the white flag a little tighter here. Nicolò wonders if he called in a favour or used an old connection to obtain the (mostly) unblemished banner. There is a red streak where a fallen drop of blood has soaked in and dried, and a grey stripe where he’d wiped off the gob of spit.

“How did you find me?” Nico now demands.

“Slowly,” replies the Saracen—something Nico inevitably calls this man in his mind, although he knows it is a cruel name.

“Don’t play with me,” Nico glares. (He has caught sight of himself in glasses and pools and wells between Jerusalem and here, and not recognised himself: a grimy trace of a man, with eyebrows that look permanently angry. He hates the sight of himself. But he hopes this man will find him intimidating—)

“I asked where I could find Nico from Genoa,” the Saracen admits. “I did not kill or bribe anyone.”

“How did you know I was from Genoa?”

“You’re speaking Genoese,” the Saracen replies, drily.

Nico feels like punching him, but—well, he is too tired, too weak, and the vigour of his sudden waking has now worn off, and he _is_ furious, but…

The Saracen has not tried to kill him. It is as if Satan is taunting Nicolò with the manner in which he has cursed him.

“Why are you here, if not to tempt me?” he growls, in lieu of punching him.

The Saracen thinks for a while about that. Again, trying to fit what he means in the limited vocabulary that sabir provides.

“I am here to talk. To know,” he says, settling on the last phrasing.

Nicolò feels… well. It’s not quite a surge of delight. But it is a faint, dancing glimmer of hope in his mind.

( _Not_ , as the thought crosses his mind, and is quickly discarded, that this man wants to know him, in any sense—biblical or otherwise. As nice as companionship would be…)

Slaying Saracens can not bring joy, despite what the Holy Father and his cardinals may have said. But maybe if he gets to know this man better, then, by God’s will, that man can know Him, and then—

“Do you know Jesus?” asks Nicolò.

The man’s eyebrows furrow a little again, in the way they do when he is thinking.

“ʿĪsā ibn Maryam?” he asks. And then, as Nicolò’s own eyebrows knot together— “Jesus, son of Mary?” After a confirmatory nod: “wasalam allah ealayhima, peace of God be upon them.”

“You know them?”

“Are you trying to make me _Christian_?” asks the Saracen. Alarmed. A dark look crossing his eyes. The word ‘Christian’ crosses his tongue with a kind of disgust.

The flicker of hope in Nicolò’s heart vanishes, and he squeezes his eyes shut. For a moment— _just_ a moment—he thought that, maybe, he might become a good friend—

“God is merciful,” says Nico. “It is not too late to turn to Him and repent.”

“Would it have made a difference?” the Saracen asks.

Nico thinks back to Jerusalem, and how his comrades, the _fuckers_ , would cut down the children, the women, the men, the animals, anything that _moved_ when it was inside the city. They did not ask for their piety.

(The fact that Nicolò has taken part in an invasion is an angry, thrumming battle horn in his head. He is responsible for this. It is his fault. And yet he is supposed to _celebrate_ this blood bath as a victory for God?)

“No,” Nicolò says, barely able to summon any breath for the sound. He is sat on his straw mattress now, head in his hands, knife at his feet.

“Ya Allah,” sighs the Saracen. “As I thought.”

“What?” Nico wonders if that was some black magic incantation, some prayer to the Devil, or whatever pagan idol he—

“Oh God,” the other man cuts in. Infuriated. “Allah is our word for God. The one God, the God of Muhammad and ʿĪsā, peace be upon them. _Oh Allah_ , help this foolish Frank who thinks I’m Iblīs or some demon or shaitan or djinnī. Who thinks now’s the time to convert me.”

“I am _not_ a Frank,” spits Nico, now standing to his feet, lunging forward, and clutching at the Saracen’s wrists. He is barely taller than Nico, and under normal circumstances, he could easily defeat him. (Under normal circumstances, where Nico was not quite literally starving to death on some nights.)

“Then stop calling me Saracen,” insists the not-Saracen, somehow knowing this was what Nico was calling him in his head.

“Then what the _fuck_ are you?” He backs the man against the wall, his candle clattering to the floor and winking out, a warm pang of smoke sending a shiver up Nicolò’s spine, the closest thing he has felt to home and comfort in a while, as he reaches across and slides the bar in the door home and tightens his grip around the Saracen’s wrists. “What are you? Why won’t you die?”

“I _don’t know_ ,” he insists, voice rising again in fear, words spilling out. “I never asked for this gift. It should not be me.”

“Liar,” says Nico, even as he sees, _knows_ , that those eyebrows would betray any lie they bracketed. (This man wears his heart on his face. He does have a heart, despite the rumours and hearsay that the infidels have evil souls tainted by black magic.) “Undo this curse and let me collect my reward in heaven.”

The Saracen’s eyes seem glassy. For a moment, Nicolò wonders if he is about to weep.

“I never wanted this,” he gulps. “I sell fabrics for my mother’s business. I am not a warrior or a soldier.”

 _That much is obvious_ , some vengeful, cruel part of Nicolò wants to reply, given how easy it was to cut the man down the first time. ( _Not_ ‘the Saracen,’ Nicolò keeps having to remind himself, because yes, he has stumbled on a truth in that it is a cruel epithet to give to a man.)

But instead Nicolò replies:

“Neither am I.”

(Because he decided, on awakening from his first death in Jerusalem, shivering, he would not be vengeful, and he would not be cruel, and he was done being a soldier.)

“Why _you_?” Nicolò wonders, aloud. “Why did God send you to test me?”

“I’m not here to test you, Nico,” replies the man, and _by God_ , Nicolò thinks, if this man does not stop calling him by that irritating nickname his comrades foisted upon him—

“Then _why_?”

“Because I wanted to see your face and hear your voice,” he sputters, all of a sudden, his accent slipping— “because I saw you in my dreams. I wanted to see you and not kill you.”

His breath is desperate, and Nicolò is now realising that maybe backing him up against the wall gave the man the wrong impression about what exact tone he wanted for this meeting, and—dear God, he hopes this man’s dreams have not included those nights when Nico was pulling himself off discreetly in his bedrolls and then sobbing afterwards—

“I am here to know you,” the Saracen repeats. “I come to know the man of my dreams.”

Nico blinks at that for a moment. The preposition choice is clumsy (what isn’t, in a chunky and fragmented lingua franca?) but—

Yes. Nicolò understands now, as much as he could hope to understand this unusual man. For he has, quite literally, been in his dreams. There has been nothing fresh for weeks, not since the second time they tried killing each other on the streets of Jerusalem. But they are still there.

(He is not the man _of_ Nicolò’s dreams. He will not ‘know’ Nicolò in that regard. Please, god, no.)

“I’m not a devil or a killer,” the man breathes. “My name is Yusuf.”

Nicolò knows his eyes are knotting in that angry, confused frump that he hates to see reflected.

“Yusuf,” he repeats, blinking, slowing down his pronunciation so Nicolò can follow along. “Yusuf. Yusuf, ibn Ibrahim, ibn Muhammad, al-Kaysani.”

The shape of the words seems familiar to Nicolò, but he discards it immediately, knowing that he is seeing a pattern that is not—

“Joseph,” he repeats.

It almost makes it worse. Nicolò’s web of guilt spins even tighter with the knowledge that, not ten minutes ago, he was willing himself to view this man as something less than human.

“Joseph, son of Abraham,” repeats Joseph, or Yusuf. And then he adds, after a few more shaky breaths when he feels more assured Nicolò is not about to try to cut out his tongue: “I sell carpets.”

Nicolò realises he has crowded Yusuf—Joseph, son of Abraham—into the wall. He is now lit by nothing but the moonlight through the window, in this abandoned house he has found himself billeted in, the shutters wide open and the sea breeze making Nicolò feel cold, although it is a pleasantly warm evening—

Nicolò is so cold, and so tired, and he has been so alone. Like Yusuf’s tunic, he is threadbare, pock-marked with wounds that will not sew themselves back together. The fabric of his existence is unravelling before his eyes.

“I had hoped you would not be like the others,” says Yusuf. “I had hoped you would see what you had done.”

Nico wants to argue. Of course he wasn’t part of what had happened at Jerusalem—he had been cut down mere seconds after killing Yusuf for the first time, so had missed most of it. Of course he did not eat Yusuf’s butchered brothers and sisters. Of course he knew, deep down, that the whole expedition, his ‘pilgrimage,’ was not about the glory of God at all, but about satiating Pope Urban’s wounded pride and establishing power and influence.

(Of course, he knew all this, and he didn’t do anything. Of course, Nicolò of Genoa looked the other way—)

“What kind of man do you take me for, Yusuf of Tunis?” asks Nico.

Again, he watches those eyes, as he thinks. Assuming he is who he says he is—that he is truly not the spawn of Satan, and merely a man—Nicolò cannot shake the feeling that Yusuf of Tunis is one of the Lord’s fairer creations.

“This was not wise,” Yusuf sighs. Eyebrows crinkling in a gesture that is somewhat apologetic, but wholly exasperated. He is looking behind him, to the barred doorway, and imagining escape.

Nicolò wants him out of his sight. Nicolò knows that would make him alone. Nicolò finds him infuriating.

(Maybe it is because Yusuf has shown Nicolò how much of a coward he truly is, and that is, and can _only_ , be a secret between himself and God—)

“Let me go,” Yusuf demands, his voice suddenly low, urgent—almost angry. “Coming here was a mistake.”

Now he is struggling to get his wrists out of Nicolò’s grip. He looks slender and under-nourished, but he is clearly nowhere near as weak as Nico. He could free himself.

“I hate you,” Nicolò spits, even as he is not sure he has the energy to truly hate him.

That makes Yusuf’s face collapse in disappointment—and then harden in resolve.

He makes his move quickly, kicking his toes into Nicolò’s shins, and tossing the white banner over him—enough to confuse him, just for a second, enough to make him roar with anger as he tries to push away the heavy fabric, and regain some sense of vision—

Nicolò reaches back, reaches the floor, scrabbles for his knife, and slashes through the fabric, and drives the blade _through_ , into Yusuf’s shoulder.

He lets out an almighty, angry roar, his teeth bared, an animal thing ( _animal_ , Nico tells himself, although he knows that if Yusuf is an animal, some accursed, deathless being, then so is he, because—)

It is as he contemplates this that he turns his back, just for a moment, to corral the shredded white fabric banner onto the bed, as Yusuf growls, and chokes, and curses in his own ugly tongue behind him—

And then, there is a horrible tearing sound, and a sudden localising of the general pain in Nicolò’s torso.

He looks down, and sees the darkened tip of a blade emerging from his chest, and suddenly, he is finding it hard to breathe.

Slain by the Saracen, again.

“That hurt,” Yusuf whispers behind him, winded, breathing laboured.

Nicolò has a split-second choice. Try to reach around to his back, and messily remove the blade, and drive it into Yusuf’s heart (or maybe his neck? Maybe his face? Maybe severing his head will break this infernal curse?) or turn around, grapple, and—

Just as Nicolò begins turning, he sees Yusuf lumber forward, bringing up a long leg to clamber up onto the mattress, and then onto the window ledge, as his vision begins to fade—

“Farewell,” he gargles, the banner gathered in his fist, as he grabs the window frame with his shaking free hand, pulls himself through, and jumps.

Nico has nothing to do but to scream _“NO!”_ after him, because—

Well, why?

Because he is dying, and maybe this one will actually be permanent, and he wants to look the man who killed him in the eyes again?

Because it should have been Nico who did that, and Yusuf from Tunis has the gall to take the kill from him, to opt out of this game, this _dance_ , this sorry affair they have both engaged themselves with—

Because he has unfinished business.

And so, as he feels blood rising in his throat, and a terrible cracking of sinews—

He hauls himself up onto the mattress, even though it is the most painful thing he thinks he has done (and he has quite literally died more times than any other man ever has, or ever will, save one, so this hurts like a _motherfucker_ ), and then brings his torso over the window pane, and then—

He cannot see anything. It is too dark.

But that is not going to stop Nicolò of Genoa.

With an indecorous kick, he is over the edge, and, for the first time in his life, experiencing free fall, and feels a sudden wind in his hair, in his shirt, in his _everything_ , as he tumbles, and turns, and wonders—as he grows faster and faster—

Maybe this is it?

Maybe this will end it?

Maybe that was the secret all along—only Nicolò could end Nicolò’s life, by falling from a high place?

Maybe this time, it will work.

He opens his mouth, to ask the Lord to forgiv—

  
  


* * *

  
  


There’s a thump and a terrible crack that runs through Nicolò’s aching skeleton as he hits the ground, face first, and expires immediately.

(It is not, alas, the crack of trumpets to herald the end of all of this.)

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Nico?”

He does not see anything this time.

What he tastes is soil and blood in his mouth.

What he feels is—well, even worse. A tense drawing apart of his back, a constant, permanent ripping. Air rattling around in his lungs, and foaming blood.

Maybe this is it—

“Nico,” says a voice that seems to gently simmer down the two syllables of that irritating nickname, and re-form them into something new.

Nicolò thinks the hunger must have driven him mad.

He hears the shifting of fabric, and the heavy scrape and thump of hands and feet on cobbles.

Another set of breaths, laboured, and a cough. A strange sound that might be humming.

Some words, in some foreign tongue that Nicolò cannot muster the energy to consider ugly.

And then, another, this one he recognises from sabir:

 _“Sorry,”_ he hears Yusuf whisper.

Nicolò manages—just about, with a terrible twisting pain that seems to run from his crown to his coccyx—to turn his head, and open his eyes, and glare at the Saracen.

“You—”

He’s trying to muster the breath for the words. _You jumped. You bastard. You stabbed me. Fuck you, demon._

(What he really wants to ask is, ‘what the fuck are you sorry for?’)

(This becomes obvious immediately.)

There is a sudden, twitching, crackling, white-hot knot of pain in his vitals. It tightens. It bounces. It wobbles, and—

There is a scraping, cutting sound, and the feeling of something moving, and Nicolò cannot help but cry out, and scream for God, for _anyone_ —

It is gone.

And then, there is something else, something maddeningly soft.

It is a hand, resting on the site of the wound, the fingers smoothing it over as it heals.

Nicolò’s breathing is starting to ease. Continuing to exist is suddenly not that hard any more. He can breathe. He can feel his side sealing up, his humours balancing, his viscera re-making themselves in God’s image.

(In _his_ image.)

“Better?” asks Yusuf.

Maybe it is because they are now outside, without the draughty echo of that house’s solar. Maybe it is because, this time, Nicolò does not have him crowded against a wall, desperate to find any excuse to run him through.

But his voice is, as with his touch, alarmingly gentle.

(Why, oh _why_ , can he not just be the heartless, soulless monster that would’ve made this so much easier? Why can the thought of murdering him not make him want to exalt and acclaim the Kingdom of the Lord—)

“Nico?” The man now sounds almost concerned. “Awake? Better?”

And then, he feels Yusuf’s hand press further into his side, shaking him a little.

Nicolò of Genoa grunts, but does _not_ curse the infidel this time.

(Even the label ‘infidel’ is now uncertain for Nicolò. The man spoke of Jesus, son of Mary—)

Yusuf lets out a stoppered breath. Almost… is that relief?

Nicolò tests his fingers, and attempts to move them to his front, as leverage, and pushes himself upright.

His arm creaks, and there is a spike of pain, and he slops back onto the street. He _does_ swear at that, but it’s more…

“All right?”

That’s another whisper from Yusuf.

Nicolò wishes he would shut up, and manages, oh-so slowly, oh-so painfully, to lift himself from his belly, onto his side, onto his back, to glare at him.

He is squatting there, skids of dust on his tunic and breeches, watching Nicolò.

Intent, but… hopeful?

His mouth is crinkled in something that might, just might, be a smile. It is almost as if Yusuf from Tunis is mocking Nicolò from Genoa.

But, with those eyebrows, Nicolò senses his concern is genuine.

The Milky Way glimmers above them, and Yusuf’s face is cast into shadow in the light of the moon.

He is holding out his hand.

Nicolò could tell him to go and sodomise a goat before cutting its head off to boil in piss and sacrifice to Satan.

That is what so many of his brothers-in-arms would have done, and indeed _have_ done.

But not Nicolò.

Not today.

 _Lord, help me,_ he whispers.

And then, he reaches for Yusuf.

Their clasp is uneasy at first. Yusuf moves to take Nicolò’s palm in his own, and Nicolò guides his fingers towards Yusuf’s forearm.

Eventually, they settle with Yusuf using his left hand to grab Nicolò by his right wrist.

This is the first time they have looked at each other, the first time they have touched, without one or both of them immediately wanting to kill the other.

(It is the first time Nicolò has had another man touch him in a way that wasn’t tainted with hostility, or fraternal persiflage, since he left Genoa.)

Yusuf stands, pulling, and Nicolò follows—slowly, gently, taking a breath with every pivot of his skeleton onto a new axis.

“Slow,” whispers Yusuf, as Nicolò tries to twist himself a bit too far in one direction, upsets his freshly regrown intercostal muscles, and, to his shame, cries in pain and goes slack.

Yusuf does not seem to mind this. He keeps his grip tight around Nicolò’s wrist, and good Lord, he can feel the tension between falling and lifting, between death and life, between sleeping and waking, between adversary and ally… it is all in the hold of Yusuf’s fingers around Nicolò’s bare arm, the wobble of his posture, the way he is breathing in and out because even in his emaciated state, Nicolò knows he must be heavy, and Yusuf is looking pretty bony as well.

(It is in the gentle glimmer of Yusuf’s eyes, the patience in his voice.)

“Come on,” Yusuf whispers again, and tugs, and brings Nicolò upwards and forwards.

He settles onto his feet, allowing them to flatten against the cobbles (which hurts, but it’s a grounding type of pain—literally) and shivers a little.

The world, for once, is the right way up.

“Better?” asks Yusuf, again with his face crinkling in a way Nicolò (God help him) almost finds endearing.

(Nico knows he should spit in his face again, let out another ‘fuck you,’ call his mother who sells fabrics a whore, curse him and the shithole barbarian encampment he comes from. He cannot, and try as he might, he does not want to. Not any more.)

He breathes, and shivers again. He wore an undershirt and nothing else to bed, and is regretting this. His knees are starting to knock against each other.

“Cold?”

Nicolò looks at Yusuf. He has noticed.

(It is a glance that lingers for longer than either of them really realises, as if they expect this to produce sparks and kindling.)

After a few more seconds, Yusuf picks up the white banner where it fell, shakes off the worst of the dust, and approaches—halting a respectful few steps away from where Nicolò stands.

His eyebrows are forming a question, wondering how to phrase it.

Nicolò allows silence to be his assent, and so, Yusuf, the unkillable Saracen, the demon who cursed Nicolò, the infidel who spoke of Jesus son of Mary and wished peace upon them in the same breath, Joseph, son of Abraham, stands behind him, and rests the white banner over his shoulder blades.

The fabric is rough-hewn, and it is clear this is not intended as a cloak or a tunic or a shawl or a surcoat.

But for now, Nico feels much better.

Yusuf retreats again, by a few paces, and makes eye contact with Nicolò.

(His stare itself no longer scares Nicolò. What truly scares him— _truly_ , more than anything—is that he no longer finds anything in the man to be afraid of.)

“Better, now?” asks Yusuf. Again. For such a man, so impossibly, inexplicably, _unfairly_ gentle.

Nicolò of Genoa, tired to the bone, and so, _so_ hungry, decides he can not lie.

For whatever reason, be it an act of God or some dark magic, between the first and second time he and Yusuf had met—for _some reason_ , Nicolò’s dreams had been of Yusuf. Every night. Vivid, shaking images of the world through his eyes.

The world through Yusuf’s eyes was Nicolò’s world upside down, shaken, sundered and refracted into something new. The world now, with Yusuf staring at him, pleading not to break this fragile truce with glassy eyes, makes more sense than anything any Pope or cardinal has ever said.

Nicolò, disgusted by his own faith’s leaders, and himself, can no longer be disgusted by a fabric merchant from Tunis.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, realising that his teeth are chattering. He draws the banner around himself. On noticing the blood-stained section has fallen on his collarbone, he adds: “sorry.”

Yusuf breathes out, closes his eyes, and nods to himself.

“For what?” he asks.

Nicolò replies, “for everything,” although he immediately knows how stupid that sounds.

“You did not do everything, Nico,” says Yusuf, and although the meaning is a little mangled, Nicolò understands what he means. He is not responsible for this entire endeavour. Regardless, Yusuf cannot forgive him for being a part of something that has so comprehensively upended eternity as all of this.

“I know.” Nicolò looks at his feet, bare, coated in dust, with a few spatters of blood. He is cold. He is tired. He remembers, his heart sinking, that he barred the door to that room in the house, and even if it would not attract the attention of his comrades, he is little more than skin and bone and too weak to break it down. Finally, he asks Yusuf: “did you find what you came here for?”

His eyebrows arch. It is an incredibly dry expression. His eyes, however, tell no lies.

They have found each other, after much too long, and neither of them is quite sure what happens next.

“I do not know,” Yusuf replies, finally. And then he looks around, and Nicolò realises they are out on the street, extremely exposed, and Yusuf is very visibly a Saracen in a city that, while not formally captured, is overrun with Crusaders. This cannot be a safe place for him, immortal or not. He reaches the same conclusion and says, averting his eyes: “I must away. I can not stay here.”

There is a long, desperately upsetting pause, because there is only one way this can end. Yusuf, son of Ibrahim, is the only man in all of Christendom and beyond who Nicolò has ever met who is like him, and knowing his luck, Nicolò does not expect to see him again.

“It was good to meet you,” Yusuf says, finally. “Talking with you with our voices is good.”

“I said very little,” Nicolò replies, and he feels a wry smile rising behind his lips. “I murdered you.”

“I also murdered you,” says Yusuf.

“I murdered you first.” Even now, Nicolò is pleading with God to forgive him for inflicting such a wicked evil on another man. “I am sorry about that.”

That raises a smile—no, more than that, a snort of laughter from Yusuf’s throat, and Nicolò feels as if the sunrise has just smiled back at him. He has no energy to deny it any longer. There is something within this man that is sweet, and kind. 

Nicolò recalls the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes recounted in the gospel of Matthew. _Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’s sake. Blessed are the peacemakers._

The last thread with which Nicolò has been hanging to his hatred of this man snaps.

Yusuf is turning to go. Nicolò takes another look at the white flag draped around his own shoulders.

“Wait,” he calls, and Yusuf stops, mid-turn. It is close enough to being the same word that Yusuf used earlier, _spettar,_ and it comes out with a similar urgency— and as Yusuf stops, and listens, Nicolò asks: “Take me.”

“What?”

“Me with you,” says Nicolò, struggling to form a coherent sentence. “Together. Out of here.”

Yusuf seems stunned by this sudden change of heart. Frankly, so is Nicolò. But it is the only course of action that makes any kind of sense.

“I know you cannot trust me,” he continues. “I know I am not worthy of your friendship. But I do not want more fighting. I want peace.”

Yusuf grimaces. He looks at his own feet, at the ruined tunic.

“I need to go home,” he says, and his voice is quavering. Something fragile seems to have broken within him, and he suddenly shields his eyes with his hands. “My mother— she will assume I am—”

The word ‘dead’ does not make it out. Because now, Yusuf of Tunis is crying. And yet again, this is Nicolò’s fault.

Nicolò has seen, as he slept, what it is like to be Yusuf from Tunis, and what it is like to be utterly heartbroken and unable to hold it in any longer. Nicolò remembers. He remembers, as Yusuf crouches, hides his face with bloody, dusty hands, and repeats to himself. In sabir, and then in what Nicolò assumes is his own tongue.

_“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”_

(Nicolò remembers, because he was part of what brought this whole sorry affair upon Yusuf in the first place.)

He feels an urge to do something about it, but can not. Yusuf, he thinks, would almost certainly lash out, strike him away, or stab him, and Nicolò would not blame him at all.

So he lets him cry out all the tears he can, and waits, and then waits some more for him to breathe, and remember where he is.

(Yes, Nicolò did weep at the Holy Sepulchre. Yes, he wept on the streets of Jerusalem. Yes— he could not put out of his mind the image of the Saracen weeping over the bodies of his dead brothers and sisters. Sad water—)

“Weep,” he says, gently.

Yusuf’s gaze jumps sideways, and he coils up, tight, ready to defend himself—until he sees… _something_ in Nicolò’s facial expression that calms him down.

(It is not enough to put him at ease. Nothing will be, not for a while.)

“Sad rain in your eyes,” Nicolò explains. “Piangir? In Genoa, we say ‘weeping.’”

Yusuf looks away, puffy-eyed. He has has no more energy to cry.

“That was what I meant,” he nods, voice low on a whisper. He sounds utterly shattered. (Nicolò holds back on asking him what the word he used in his own tongue was.)

“Rain stopped now?” asks Nicolò. He hopes he sounds gentle, because his famished body can barely summon enough energy to keep breathing. “Better?”

After a long pause, and a peculiar stare, Yusuf agrees: “Better.”

Nicolò tries to force a smile. He is sure it doesn’t really come out that way. (He has never thought much of his own face.)

“Tunis, yes?” he asks, after a long pause. Yusuf doesn’t reply, but Nicolò takes his silence for a ‘yes,’ and offers: “I shall help you get there.”

“You shall not,” insists Yusuf, preparing to argue—

“It is the least I can do, sir,” Nicolò interrupts. “I have been a fool and a monster. I cannot annul the evils I have done to you or your people. This can be my penance.”

“I don’t _want_ to be your penance, Nico.”

“Then I offer you my protection. In peace.”

They are both, by now, sat against the wall of the old house—the one they both jumped or fell from. It may just be minutes ago. It feels like years. Yusuf leans his head back against the brick wall, and closes his eyes, exhaling deeply.

“If my people find out what you are,” Nicolò reasons, “they will imprison you. I shall protect you.”

“And be imprisoned yourself?” asks Yusuf.

“We can protect each other.”

Yusuf sighs again. He looks skyward, as if hoping for an answer from God.

“A moment ago you said you hate me,” he mumbles.

(A moment, yes. A moment that even now Nicolò is embarrassed and ashamed by. Maybe one day Yusuf will absolve him for his cruelty. He is not sure what he will tell any priest about this. _I repeatedly murdered a Saracen?_ They would, no doubt, be disappointed he had not repeatedly murdered more.)

“You’ll want a ship back across to Tunis, yes?” suggests Nicolò, leaving the ‘I hate you’ remark from earlier untouched.

Yusuf glares at him.

“Sorry,” Nicolò replies, feeling shrunken. “I was making sure.” When Yusuf doesn’t reply to that, he adds: “I will not sail. I will walk or ride back.”

“You’re going to _walk_ to Genoa?”

Nicolò snorts, and gives a tiny nod, whispering: “I don’t like being on the water.”

“You don’t like water?”

“I can’t swim, I get ill inside ships—”

“You _don’t like water_?” Yusuf repeats, and then lets out a confounded sigh. “What kind of a Genoese are you, Nico? God help you.”

Nicolò is _very_ relieved to see Yusuf is actually laughing at that. His smile makes him feel full, and warm, and whole.

It is a long time since Nicolò has felt like that.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Acknowledgments** : The sabir passages spoken by Yusuf are based on vocabulary from [Alan D Corré’s glossary of the Lingua Franca](https://web.archive.org/web/20090203083909/http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/go.html), roughly using French(ish) grammar. (Obviously, I know the vocabulary and grammar would’ve looked different in 1099. I am not a linguist. My French is also abysmal.)
> 
> Huge thanks to [fadagaski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadagaski/) for beta reading.
> 
> This will be a series of three (or maybe more) fics themed around defenestrations. The next one will be… *ahem* **inspired** by _Aladdin_ (2019 dir. Guy Ritchie), and Marwan Kenzari's turn as Jafar. You've been warned…


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